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Communists
stand by regional autonomy
The Communist Party reiterated its policy on the ethnic question
at its 65th anniversary celebration last week. It said it
stands for (1) negotiated political solution, (2) based on
regional autonomy.
Its leader, Raja Collure, declared that regional autonomy
was the only answer to the Tamil problem and added that the
party supported the implementation of the constitutional provisions
concerning the use of Tamil language.
In his article reviewing the history of the Communist Party,
its General Secretary D.E.W. Gunasekera, Minister of Constitutional
Affairs, said the party supported the enactment of the Reasonable
Use of Tamil law of 1958 and then the Indo-Sri Lanka Pact
of 1987. In a self critical analysis he admitted the party
had erred during the intervening period.
Three events that occurred during this period are well known.
The first was its shouting of the slogan ‘Dudlyge bade
masala vada’ at the 1965 May Day rally. The second was
its joining the protest march of January 8, 1966, opposing
the enactment of the regulations to implement the Reasonable
Use of Tamil law which it supported.
The third was more reprehensible. It joined LSSP deputy leader
Dr. Colvin R. de Silva in entrenching Sinhala in the 1972
constitution as the official language and the unitary character
of the state, both contradictory to its policies. Gunasekera,
does not mention another event that occurred in December 1974,
which the EPDP had exposed recently in ‘Blood Evidence’
which it serialises in its official organ Thinamurasu.
Most probably he is unaware of it. Summary of Thinamurasu
report:
Nomination for the Kankesanthurai by-election of 1975 was
to close next noon. Communist Party’s Jaffna organiser
and central committee member V. Ponnambalam was in his home
with his supporters when he received a telephone call. He
was told to stop distributing the Communist Party pamphlet
detailing its position on the ethnic question.
“We have distributed over one thousand copies,”
V.P. tells the caller. The party had printed 10,000 copies.
The caller was Pieter Keuneman, the Minister of Housing in
the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government and general secretary
of the Communist Party.
“Come immediately to the Rest House. We are waiting to
meet you.”
V.P. rushed to the Rest House.
Keuneman was with two other ministers, Transport Minister
Leslie Goonawardene of the LSSP and Posts Minister C. Kumarasuriyar
of the SLFP.“Don’t distribute the pamphlet,”
Keuneman told V.P.
“Why? Are there mistakes in it?
Kumarasuriyar replied. “You are contesting as a United
Front candidate. SLFP does not accept the Communist Party’s
solution. So don’t distribute the pamphlet.”
V.P. was annoyed. “Look. Communist Party is a member
of the United Front. The pamphlet I am distributing gives
the party’s answer to the ethnic problem. It bears the
signatures of the party president Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe
and general secretary Pieter Keuneman.”
V.P. then explained that Federal Party leader S.J.V. Chelvanayagam
resigned his seat to seek a mandate from the Tamil people
for his demand for a federal solution. Youth organisations
have decided to support him. Unless we present an alternate
solution, there is no purpose in contesting him, he pointed
out.
Instead of answering V.P’s argument, Kumarasuriyar began
a harangue. V.P. got up, said he was not contesting the election
and walked out. Around midnight the ministerial delegation
went to V.P.’s house and persuaded him to contest saying
that they had had talks with the Prime Minister and had got
an undertaking to work out a solution and implement it in
three months.
V.P. trusted them and told the voters that the government
would find a solution in three months and conducted his campaign
on that basis. He polled a respectable 9,457 votes against
Chelvanayagam’s 25,927 votes at the election held on
January 8, 2008. The promise was not kept and a frustrated
V.P. joined the Tamil United Liberation Front and migrated
to Canada where he died.
The pamphlet V.P. distributed outlined the Communist Party’s
solution which Keuneman summed up thus, in an interview to
the World Marxist Review of February 1984:
Our approach to inter-community relations is based on the
twin principles of (1) recognising the territorial unity of
Sri Lanka, and (b) the Tamils’ right to self-determination.
It is our opinion that the solution lies in preserving a united
Sri Lanka with regional autonomy for the Tamil areas. That
was the position the party adopted in its 9th convention and
later exemplified in the 11th Convention. Gunasekera admitted
that the party had made mistakes during this period. Its main
concern in 1965 and 1966, was to be in the United Front from
which the SLFP extremist group led by R.G. Senanayake was
trying to oust them.
In 1972, their concern was to make Sri Lanka a republic thus
severing the bonds with British capitalism and to strengthen
the working class. They were then facing opposition from the
SLFP opportunists led by Felix R. Dias Bandaranaike.
The communists and the LSSP suffered due to their mistakes.
Their support base in the north was wiped out. And, in the
rest of the country, Tamils turned against the left parties.
Keuneman’s political rise and fall is an indicator.
Keuneman was a Burgher with no personal vote bank. He depended
on the support of the Tamils and Muslims who formed the majority
in the 3-member Colombo Central seat. In 1947, he was elected
as the third member. In 1952 and 1956, he moved to the first
place. In the March and July elections of 1960, with the Muslims
voting for their own candidate, he dropped to the second place.
His Tamil support base remained. In 1965 and 1970 elections,
that base also cracked due to the party’s ‘mistakes.’
He lost the 1977 election.
The Communist Party and the LSSP never regained the confidence
of the Tamil people
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